


Faith

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Canon Divergence, Demon Blood, Experimental, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26168455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Rivers are running red with blood in upstate Pennsylvania, and Sam's been losing time. He keeps waking up with the taste of blood in his mouth, copper running sticky down his hands. It's hard to know what to be afraid of when you can't keep track of when you are.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is weird. Don't worry, I know it's weird. My favorite stories are those that make sense out of the corner of your eye. Blink, and the meaning shifts and disappears. I love stories that leave me wanting, that leave me frustrated and a little confused. I love stories that dump me in the deep end of the pool and take away my liferaft. I've admired them forever. This is my attempt at creating one of them. I don't expect everyone (or anyone?) to like it.
> 
> I started writing this while I was still watching S4, so it takes place in that space-ish. I suppose it's bad form to apologize for things you're not really sorry for, so I'll just say this: I'm finally writing the nonlinear monstrosity of my heart.

“It’s good, Dean. It’s so good, I promise. Like the best thing in the world.”

“Sammy, I don’t—”

“Shh.” He pets down the side of Dean’s arm with his free hand, the other raising the battered flask to his lips. He takes the cap between his teeth and pops it off, sucking it into his mouth and running his tongue over it, sucking the thin coating of blood from its interior. It’s not enough—not nearly enough, but he’s always liked a little tease. He gets all he can before spitting it out. “It’s okay,” Sam says, offering Dean a small smile.

He brings the flask to Dean’s lips, and Dean flinches but doesn’t move away. Sam slides his free hand up to cup the back of Dean’s head, trapping him between the wall and his body. Dean’s mouth opens, just a little, just enough, and Sam tips the thick, viscous liquid inside.

“Oh god.” Dean’s face screws up like he’s going to retch, and Sam clamps a hand over Dean’s mouth on instinct.

He’s helping.

The dregs of blood clinging to Dean’s lips transfer to his palm, the sensation smeary and wet. Sam brings his other hand up to Dean’s throat, cupping the taut ridge of cartilage and muscle there. Dean breathes hard through his nose, and for a second, he thinks Dean might fight him.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Sam says. “It’s fine. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

He keeps his hand in place, clamped firmly around Dean’s mouth until he feels him swallow. Then he takes his hand away and leans back, watching Dean through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Jesus fuck, Sam.”

Dean spits, then spits again. Sam lets him. He watches Dean try to get the taste out of his mouth because it doesn’t matter—he’s swallowed most of it anyway. If he wants to spit out the dregs, it’s fine.

Dean talks a lot when he’s scared. Sam isn’t sure that’s something Dean knows about himself.

“That’s fucking  _ foul. _ I can’t believe you drank that shit on purpose.”

“It gets better,” Sam says, sucking the remnants off his palm. “Soon you’ll even like the taste, I promise.”

Dean snorts. “Fat chance.”

“I mean it,” Sam says, all bright, all earnest. He looks at Dean, and he loves him. Loves him. His heart feels like it’s going to burst, and he thinks it’s possible he’s never loved Dean as much as he does in this moment.

He clambers onto Dean’s lap, never mind the dirt he gets on himself from the filthy floor. He knocks his knee hard into the ground in the process. He’s too big for this, gangling and enormous, but he clings to Dean like a leech, and he licks the blood from his lips.

He cups Dean’s jaw like a holy relic, reverent and trembling. He tips Dean’s face to the light, drinking in the sight of sweat breaking out along his temples, the faint flush on his cheeks and his pupils blown black and wide.

“You’re so beautiful,” Sam murmurs. Any other time, it might be ridiculous, but nothing is fucking funny here now. Not now, after everything.

Sam fits their mouths together and chases every last taste of copper from Dean’s mouth with his tongue. He becomes a cartographer, mapping the lay of the land, exploring and probing like he wants to be able to draw a map by feel alone.

Dean is sweating and trembling, but he doesn’t fight. Not anymore. It feels like a small victory when he brings shaking, twitching hands up to span Sam’s back, palms stretched wide over his shoulder blades. The first of many.

*

Sam always wants blood. There’s never a second that he doesn’t. He can taste it oily and thick in the back of his throat. He can taste it in his dreams.

He dreams of Jess and wakes up alone, legs tangled in the sweat-sticky sheets wrapped around him tight as a noose. He wakes with lungs heaving and eyes burning.

Dean watches him from the other bed, wary-eyed and hard-mouthed. Sam swallows hard and looks away first.

Sam takes a deep breath and counts to five—he can never quite make it to ten before the cut-wire ends of his frayed nerves splinter and snap. He bends down and unwinds the sheets slowly, peeling them off his legs until he can move freely. He pushes himself off the bed before they’ve begun to stop wobbling. Dean hates him, hates him.

Sam doesn’t blame him. Sam hates Sam too.

He disappears into the bathroom and even makes it to the toilet before he starts to retch. He had time to slide the bathroom door shut—didn’t have time to start the shower. Dean will have heard it all.

The chorus in his head still goes blood blood blood, even through the bile.

* * *

They’re back on the hunt together, but it doesn’t feel normal. Nothing feels normal for longer than thirty seconds at a stretch—the length of time it takes to get in a wisecrack, a joke that lands just well enough to make Sam laugh. Of course Sam laughs. Dean knows just how to pull those strings, the ones that run lengthwise into his hardwired humor—of course he does; Dean installed most of them himself.

They keep turning up little jobs, little side streets off the fuckshit course of destiny. They keep getting waylaid in the goddamn apocalypse.

Today it’s blood in a river.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” says the woman in front of him, Mrs. Johanson with the pale grey hair gone the faintest shade of lavender, wide blue eyes that seem unnaturally vivid in their crepe-paper sockets. Her hand shakes with a palsy. Sam follows the motion of it as it pushes a tuft of her coiffed hair back behind an ear. “It just turned up all-over pink. It was almost… pretty, so long as you didn’t get too close. It almost looked like something out of a dream.”

Dean scoffs softly, and Sam fights his first instinct to kick at his brother’s foot or to give him a look that says  _ really, dude? _

“You told the police it was blood?” Sam asks.

She nods. “They said they’d send someone out, but, well—frankly, I’m surprised they did. I know they think I’m a daft old biddy. It’s nice to be proven wrong once in a while.”

Mrs. Johanson smiles at Sam, who gives a vague, uncertain smile back. It doesn’t sit easily on his face—it feels like it slides down at the edges. Dean notices but pretends that he doesn’t.

Mrs. Johanson seems oblivious to the uncomfortable nonverbal jiu jitsu taking place just a few paces to the left of her. She takes a dark, cinnamon-spiced cookie out of the roll lying on the kitchen table and offers the package to each of them in turn.

“No, thank you,” Sam says. Interviews always bring out the marine brat in him—he figures you can still be a marine brat if your dad was discharged long before you came around, figures you still count if you were practically raised as a child soldier.

“No. Thanks,” Dean says, flashing their host his thousand-watt grin.

“How did you know it was blood?” Sam asks, because someone has to.

Mrs. Johanson wrinkles her nose like she’s recalling something unpleasant. “Why, the smell, of course.”

*

“So, the river running red with blood,” Sam says once they’re outside the house, the startlingly red front door closed soundly behind him. Mrs. Johanson had managed to foist a few cookies on them after all, and his mouth tastes like cinnamon and molasses, all dry and stuck together.

He needs a drink. Not that kind of drink, but—not  _ not _ that kind either. He swallows heavy.

“Running pink, by the sounds of it.”

Sam nods. Point to Dean for semantics.

“Is there anything about rivers of blood in Revelations?”

Sam cocks his head. “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t, to tell you the truth.”

Dean grunts. Point to Sam. “So I guess back to the drawing board.”

* * *

The drawing board is in their room, like everything else. Sam eyes his laptop for a scant minute, sucking on his teeth. In the end, he leaves it be, tucked into its case, harmless. He pulls open the nightstand drawer and finds a slim, black Gideon Bible. He takes it and flops onto the bed, feeling in the mood for some slow process research.

He flips to the back of the book, starts at Revelation chapter one, and starts reading.

Sam’s no slouch when it comes to poring over dry texts—law textbooks and a childhood spent researching the arcane in dead languages saw to that—but he’s no speed-reader either. It takes him most of the afternoon to work his way through the book, letting his head fill with gory images of the earth laid waste, people crying out for the mountains to fall upon them, and a Christ child with a tongue like a sword.

The angle of the sun has changed by the time he finally yawns and gets up, badly needing to stretch. He turns the book openside-down and leaves it spreadeagled on the bedspread for safekeeping. Dean is working on his laptop at the table, face illuminated with the ghostly blue glow of electronic light, eyes scanning back and forth across some page that Sam can’t see.

He looks up, meeting Sam’s eyes—a fluid, hunter’s motion. As if he’d known all along that Sam was there. As if he knew the instant Sam started looking.

Maybe he did, Sam thinks. A lifetime of hunting and tuning all of their senses to respond to the slightest sensation. A lifetime of living in each other’s pockets, with the other at your back—it did things to a person’s mind, as if by will and rote alone, you could extend your awareness onto another person’s body. Like you could share it as your own.

The thought gives Sam a brief shiver.

“You find anything good, Bible boy?”

Sam shakes his head. “Not yet. I need to go for a walk.”

He doesn’t miss the way Dean tenses, the way he bristles. For one thing, Dean barely tries to hide it. For another, that awareness goes both ways.

“You sure you don’t want company? Give me—” Dean glances at the computer. “—five minutes, and I’ll come with you.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Dean just looks at him.

“Want anything from the vending machine?” Sam asks after a beat.

It’s an overture toward peace, and he begs Dean to take it, even as he fights down the rage that threatens to lick up the sides of his heart.

“Sure, get me a Snickers bar and some Cheetos, if they’ve got ‘em.”

Sam nods. He grabs a key card off the nightstand and tries not to scratch at the back of his neck, at the place where he can feel Dean’s eyes boring into him. The afternoon air is fresh and bracing after hours spent in their claustrophobic room. It’s a nonsmoking room, by some miracle, but he’d swear it still smells tainted.

Maybe it’s Dean’s distrust bleeding off him in waves, poisoning everything. Maybe it’s just the copper tang of blood that follows him like a phantom itch, lodged in his nose wherever he goes.

Whatever it is, he’s glad of the scent of dry prairie grass and the light sting of cool evening air. The moon’s made an early appearance tonight, a ghostly sickle hanging in the pale blue sky. Sam takes a deep breath, in and out. Another and another.

He picks a direction and takes a lap. He knows he’s going the opposite way of the vending machine. He resolutely does not look at the curtained window to their room, too afraid to see what there is to see—afraid he’ll see a flash of Dean’s face peering out at him, and all the distrust written there.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam was raised on caution. On awareness of his surroundings, on  _ constant vigilance,  _ like the infinitely less fun version of Mad-Eye Moody at Hogwarts. He’s distracted, but not that distracted. He’d never walk straight into a trap.

But that’s the thing—there were no signs. No ozone in the air, no scent of sulfur, no prickle of hair raised along the back of his neck—nothing to tell him to turn back. He’d just left the room for a second; he doesn’t even have his gun.

The air shimmers faintly for a second, like the lines of heat coming off the blacktop on a scorching summer day. His limbs feel heavy and strange. There’s a pressure in his head that builds and builds—it tastes like the edge of insanity, like fear alight in his hippocampus. He feels like he’s going to be sick, and then all at once, the feeling goes away.

It still brings him to his knees. He’s hands and knees on the hard-packed earth before he even knows what hit him, wheezing and retching and fighting like hell to keep his meager breakfast down. It’s a testament to a lifetime of getting socked directly in the stomach that he spits out sour bile but nothing more.

Sam staggers up before he’s ready, head still reeling and hands coming up in a defensive posture. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s magic, there’s probably something nasty that wants to carve him up—Lucifer, the angels, demons—take your pick these days, really.

He really should have brought his fucking gun.

There’s a person standing before him. Really a person, because it’s almost impossible to tell anything else about them. They seem neither young nor old. He can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Their face is beautiful and calm, and Sam isn’t a crier, but something about the expression on their face—it’s so kind that he feels tears prickling at the corner of his eyes. He feels like he might choke.

_ What  _ _ are _ _ you? _ he might ask, but that would be predicated on his ability to speak.

As it is, it’s all he can do to tremble. His arms fall down by his sides, and his knees feel weak. The person walks closer, and Sam sinks to his knees before them. It feels like a sigh, like the purest exhalation of relief.

“Peace,” they say. “Don’t be afraid.”

But he is afraid. He’s afraid and vibrating out of his skin, quaking with it. He feels like he might shake apart.

They reach out and touch him, nothing more than a light tap on the shoulder, and it feels like liquid warmth spreading through his system.

“Rise,” they say, and he does.

Sam staggers to his feet on new-colt legs. It’s hard to look this person in the face. There’s no light in the area—none that shouldn’t be there—the late afternoon sun still slants over the mountain peaks in the distance. The neon vacancy sign flickers over the parking lot. The stranger doesn’t  _ glow—  _

Except that they do. They’re brighter than anything around them, brighter without being brighter. It’s a truth and a lack of truth that edges Sam’s mind toward that same edge of madness, if he thinks about it too hard. It’s a beauty sharper and purer, a light more clean and prismatic. Everything dims in the wake of the stranger.

“Sam,” the voice says, full of infinite kindness.

He chokes. He wants to weep.

“What.” It’s all he can manage.

“You’ve been struggling, Sam.” They sound so sad, full of an honest compassion, and he wants to throw himself at their feet all over again. They tilt their head. “You have the trappings of faith, but no faith.”

They aren’t hurting him. It’s just so hard to speak. Getting a single sentence out is an enormous effort. “What are you?”

They ignore his question entirely.

“I’m just going to… tweak things a little bit, Sam. You’ll hardly notice it.”

The stranger twists a slim, delicate hand, and the world seems to shift and then settle. They’re still looking at him like that, like he’s the saddest thing they’ve ever seen. It puts a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“What did you do?” Sam asks, still breathing hard.

“Nothing you won’t like,” the creature says with a faint smile. “Let the angels of your worser nature reign.”

Everything goes brighter and brighter, a white light blotting out all around them, until it suddenly dims. When the world returns to normal, there are long, blinking moments where Sam thinks he’s blind. The light of day seems off. The world itself looks like someone has turned down the saturation on the tv. Everything seems bleached and dull.

The stranger is gone when his eyes clear.

“Hey!” Sam yells. “Hey! Where are you? Show yourself!”

He yells and yells, but he’s causing a scene, and there’s no one there to answer.

* * *

A car alarm goes off in the parking lot, and at least one person has poked their head out of their room, eyeing Sam wary and irritated. Sam keeps his head down and hurries back to his own room. He forgets the candy entirely, never even sets eyes on the vending machine.

Dean eyes him when he gets back. “What took you?”

“Nothing,” Sam lies. He doesn’t know why he lies. He’d resolved to tell Dean the truth, no matter what, after the debacle with Ruby. With Lilith. Still, he lies.

Dean knows it, too. He sees something flicker over Dean’s face, watches his brother’s face harden. “Whatever. Did you get the Cheetos?”

“Uh, no. Sorry.” Sam digs the quarters out of his pocket and sets them on the nightstand. “I can go back, if you want.”

Dean growls and pushes off the bed, irritated. He grabs at the loose change and shoves it in his own pocket. “Forget it.” He pauses and looks at Sam on his way out the door. “What’s your damage, man?”

_ I don’t know, _ Sam thinks. He feels hysteria bubbling up. He grins, charming shyster, weirdly out of place. It’s not what he wants at all.

“You tell me,” he says.

Dean shakes his head and slams the door behind him.

The truth stays locked up behind Sam’s teeth, and somehow that’s just how it’s supposed to be.

*

He’s dreaming. Even within his dream, he knows it. He just can’t wake up. The room he’s standing in is the same one he fell asleep in, seen through a funhouse mirror. His brother sleeps on the next bed, close enough to touch. Sam reaches out, and the distance stretches. Dean gets further and further away. Sam can never quite reach. He tries and he tries, and Dean sleeps on.

A jackal-headed woman guards the door, watching with impassive eyes. Her arms are crossed across her chest. In her right hand, she carries a flail. In her left, she carries a long, grey ribbon.

“Help me,” Sam says.

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t so much as move a muscle, but Sam swears he sees a flicker of awareness in her eyes.

Then he wakes up.

*

The bed beside him is empty when he wakes. The clock beside the nightstand is blinking, flashing all its red digits at once, no help at all. The sky is little better. It casts a dim wash over everything, bright but grey. He couldn’t tell the position of the sun if he tried.

He puts his hand to the empty, tousled bed. Still warm.

“Dean?”

No answer. The room is still and quiet. Dean probably went out to grab food. There’s no reason to panic, but his heart thumps in his chest all the same. Sam breathes deep and slow, trying to slow it down. His fingers itch for the doorknob. He wants to check the parking lot. He wants blood. He wants a lot of things.

His stomach gurgles, loud and empty, and that’s at least one thing he can do something about. He flicks on the light in the cramped little bathroom, avoiding his eyes under the yellow-hued light. He cranks on the tap and drinks from a cupped hand, splashing water over his face and into his hair, slicking it down. He gasps like he’s been drowning.

_ Anubis, _ he thinks.  _ What’s the weight of my soul? _

But no answer is forthcoming and contrary to his nerves, Dean does not appear as if by magic. He settles on his bed and flicks on the staticky little TV.

* * *

Sam doesn’t ask where Dean’s been, and Dean doesn’t offer. He comes back with a cardboard carton of fried chicken just as the sky is starting to paint itself rose-tinted. The thick, heavy smell of grease is comforting, relaxing something deep in Sam that stretches back to the beginning, to evenings spent cross-legged on other hotel beds, knee to knee with Dean while their dad stretched out across the tiny sliver of an aisle. Collard greens and fried chicken in the South, KFC’s artificially smooth mashed potato paste everywhere else.

“Earth to Sammy.”

“Sorry, what?”

“You tell me. You’re the one spacing out into the potatoes.”

“It’s nothing. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.” Dean doesn’t look at him, too busy unboxing their haul, spreading it out across the bed the way they did when they were kids, but Sam can hear the skepticism in his voice.

“What? I said it’s nothing,” Sam says, starting to get a little irritated now. His fright from earlier—the unease from waking up to find Dean gone, the weird dreams—he feels off-balance.

“And I said fine. Okay, I believe you,” Dean says in a voice that says anything but.

It nettles Sam, works its way deep beneath his skin, but there’s nothing he can do about it, nothing he can say without coming off as the bad guy, the unreasonable one. That’s the thing about games—you still need to play them, even when you both know it’s a rigged deck. Even when you both know how it’s going to end.

Dean grabs two beers from the inside of an Aldi’s bag and holds one out to Sam. Sam knows better than to interpret it as a peace offering, but he takes it all the same.

Dean settles across from him, legs hanging off the end of Sam’s bed. He’s half tilted toward Sam, head angled at the TV. He jerks his head toward it. “What’re we watching?”

Sam shrugs. “I dunno. Some war documentary was on.” He flips the remote in Dean’s direction, and it lands harmlessly between them on the bed. “Knock yourself out.”

“Nerd,” Dean says fondly. He flips through channels with one hand, the other wrist deep in the bucket of chicken. “Drumstick, nice.” 

He gnaws on it while Sam uncaps the various sides, yanking the plastic off a spork with his teeth. Sam digs into the green beans first, french cut and mushy, weirdly comforting for the way they’re the same the world over. He didn’t see a chicken place on the drive in, but it must’ve been nearby. The beans release a plume of steam when he stabs his spork in, hot and buttery and soothing his throat as it slides down.

The Three Stooges laugh on TV. Dean’s found some kind of black-and-white oldies channel, and he’s laughing along, fingers wrapped loosely around a beer bottle. Sam mostly ignores it, finding little comfort in the sameness, the routine of flashing lights.

He eats his fill, packing away almost as much as Dean, for once. Something about the meal—for the briefest of moments here and there, it almost feels like it fills the emptiness inside him. Something about the heat of it, the salt and fat, the alchemy of nostalgia—it almost touches something way down deep that never feels anything but cold anymore.

He doesn’t know where that thought came from.

Sam grips his spork too tight until the brittle plastic of it shatters. He makes a noise as one of the shards stabs into the meat of his palm.

“Dude!”

Dean’s setting down his beer, wiping his fingers hastily on his shirt, already leaning over and uncurling Sam’s hand where it’s cupped around the wound. Blood wells up around a shard of black plastic.

“Sammy, what the hell.” It isn’t a question.

“Sorry. I’m alright,” is all Sam can offer.

Dean picks the pieces out of his hand, and Sam is shaking just a little, wanting to tear his hand away but too stunned to move.

He doesn’t know why he did that.

* * *

He wakes up with blood all over his face. He’s lying sideways, the world tilted on its axis, the world hard beneath his head. Something crunches underneath him—gravel.

His face sticks when he moves, wrinkling and crackling when he grimaces, and that’s how he finds the blood.

It’s not his blood, he doesn’t think. He checks himself over, and he feels fine. His head is killing him. There are divots in the side of his face where he was taking a dirt nap, but nothing is cut. He doesn’t feel concussed.

There’s a fucking lot of blood, all over him, all over his clothes.

His first thought is  _ what. _ His second is  _ did I kill someone. _

He should call Dean. He needs to call Dean, but he pats his pocket, and his phone is gone. His shoes are gone too, bare-socked on the dirty ground, damp dirt underneath grinding into them. He thinks  _ what. _

He doesn’t have his keys, but he at least remembers where they’re staying, so he walks. It only takes him ten minutes, a bus map, and one strung-out vagabond who eyes him warily to get his bearings and get his feet pointed in the right direction.

It’s early morning, and the streets are still mostly deserted. The dawn is just barely deigning to break, painting the world in a dim, grey light. It helps, a little. He shuffles home, and he stays out of sight. He holds his breath and does not get arrested.

Dean isn’t waiting for him, and Sam thinks he should be. It’s a strange and selfish thought—that Dean ought to be where Sam is, where Sam needs him. Dean is gone, the Impala gone. He’s almost certainly out searching for Sam, and Sam wants him here.

He’s got no keys to the motel room. No matter. He scours the ground until he finds a rusted-out bobby pin in the margin between curb and asphalt, the eternal detritus of city life. He pries it open until it snaps, then uses it to pick the door open.

He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t (absolutely  _ does not) _ freak out about where he’s been or how he got there, why he’s covered in blood and why he doesn’t remember. He’s picking a lock. He’s taking a shower.

It only takes a few minutes. After all, he’s been doing this for years.

No one screams, no one runs over in alarm. The other tenants stay tucked away inside their rooms, and Sam slips into the room with a sigh, thinking of the shower, thinking of peeling these clothes off him—they’re starting to reek— and calling Dean, not necessarily in that order.

He ends up kissing the wall, chest pressed flush, with the click of the safety and a familiar shape jammed up hard into the base of his neck, his brother’s voice growling, “Who the fuck are you?” in his ear.

“It’s me,” Sam gasps out. “Dean, it’s me. It’s Sam.”

“Prove it.”

Sam holds out his arm, and he feels Dean’s weight shift. His shirtsleeve is rucked up, and he feels a bright bloom of pain across his forearm. He hears Dean blow out a breath, and the gun pressed to his skull eases up.

He turns around slowly, hands in the air.

“Christo,” Dean says.

Apparently his eyes don’t flash black (thank god—Sam was wondering too; Sam was afraid) because Dean sighs. He scrubs a hand over his face and tosses the gun onto the bed.

“Now what the fuck happened to you?”

Sam swallows. He realizes then that he really didn’t intend to talk about it. The phone call was not going to be his first stop in this endeavor. His clothes would’ve found their way into the dumpster outside, buried at the bottom, and they’d have never spoken about this.

So much for that now.

“I—” his throat sticks. He clears it and tries again. “I don’t know. I’ve been… losing time.”


	3. Chapter 3

“What do you mean, you’re losing time?”

“Just what I said. I’ve been losing time. Waking up places.” Sam’s voice comes out waspish and nettled, and he’s ashamed of himself in the same breath as he can’t stop. He’s covered in someone else’s blood, painted from head to toe—he’s got no right to be shitty about this, but it’s just so  _ frustrating. _ “I don’t know whose blood this is,” he says softer.

“Okay. Shit, shit, okay.” There’s Dean’s fix-it voice, his big brother voice. Sam hates it and loves it in equal measure. He resents that Dean thinks he can fix this—that he can fix  _ Sam, _ just lift problems straight out of his hands and take them away before Sam’s even really done  _ trying _ to fix them on his own—at the same time, he wants to beg Dean to do just that.  _ Fix it, fix it, save me. _

“Do you remember getting here?”

Sam nods. He almost pushes a hand through his hair before he remembers how truly bad that would be. He doesn’t want to feel the sticky stringiness of it, doesn’t want to feel matted gore between his fingers. “Yeah, I walked down Broadway. I woke up in an alley. I— what happened?”

“I don’t know. I went to sleep on Friday. I woke up, and you were gone. I looked everywhere.”

“Friday—what day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Holy shit.”

He takes in Dean’s appearance, then. Really takes it in, the bruises across his knuckles, the shadows under his eyes, the hard, unyielding set of his mouth.

_ Are you okay? _ he wants to ask. “Where’s the car?” he says instead.

“Parked a few streets away. I wasn’t sure if.” He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t really need to. Sam can fill in the blanks well enough—if you were possessed, if you’d gone darkside, if you’d fallen off the wagon, if, if, if.

“Okay.”

Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, looking at Sam sidelong. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”

“Dean, I don’t know whose blood this is, if someone’s hurt, if—”

“I know,” Dean says. “But you’re not getting in my car looking like that. Go get cleaned up, and we’ll figure it out.”

It’s comforting, it really is. It’s comforting to be part of a  _ we, _ to be told what to do in sure, even tones that have followed him all his life. To have even this much, after all this time.

*

“Okay,” Sam says. “So what do we know?” 

What they turned up while looking into Sam’s disappearance: a big ol’ goose egg. They’d sifted through local news sites and community message boards, an ear on the police scanner listening for attacks—for homicides. Nothing. The closest thing they found was an animal attack that turned out to be an actual animal attack—some family’s Labrador retriever getting testy after a neighbor boy wouldn’t leave it alone.

Hell, they’d even driven around Johnstown, starting at the place where Sam woke up and traveling out in concentric circles, Dean cracking jokes behind the wheel but his knuckles white around it while Sam looked out the window, grim-faced, eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of the damage.

But they’d turned up nothing—actually nothing. Whatever Sam had attacked, whatever lost enough blood to drench a 6-foot-something man from head to toe, it hadn’t crawled its way into any hospitals or washed up in any back alleys. Sam can’t tell if the emotion he feels is relief.

So now they’re working the case, same as they always do, because it’s something  _ to _ do. Nevermind that it feels bizarrely surreal, so much like ignoring the elephant in the room. Nevermind that somehow, somewhere, Michael and Lucifer are still gunning for them, dying to jump their bones. Nevermind that Sam is waiting for the other shoe to drop, afraid that he’ll blink his eyes and wake up somewhere else, someone else.

Blithely ignoring pachyderm has always been something of a Winchester family specialty.

Dean leans back in one of the motel chairs, so far that its front legs leave the dingy carpet. “There have been three sightings of bloody rivers in the area. Mrs. Johanson at the Conemaugh River and two others at the Little Conemaugh and Stonycreek Rivers upstate.”

“All around the same time?”

“Seems like,” Dean says. “Whoever’s causing this—whatever’s causing it—either moves fast or isn’t a  _ who _ at all. What’ve you got?”

“Revelations 16, ‘And the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they turned to blood.’”

“Lovely.”

“It gets better. ‘And I heard the angel of the waters say: Righteous are You, O Holy One, who is and was, because you have brought these judgments. For they have spilled the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, as they deserve.’”

“So someone out here is killing prophets? I thought those had, you know, archangel secret service detail on them 24/7.”

“Could be a saint.”

Dean makes a face. “Do saints even exist anymore? I thought they were all—Mother Teresa, and all that.”

Sam shrugs. “Could be. I mean, why not? A year ago we’d have said angels didn’t exist either.”

“So why not saints.” Dean sighs, tossing the napkin he’s been twisting into knots at the table. “Great, saints. Let’s find out who’s been killing ‘em.”

“You go canvas local churches. I’ll pull up the homicide records for the last few years.”

Dean hesitates. Sam can  _ feel _ his hesitation, even with his eyes glued to the screen, fingers already hacking into the local PD’s record management system.

“Dean, I’m fine. Go. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

No dice. That skepticism, still. That hesitation and silence leveled in Sam’s direction.

“Seriously, unless you want to stand there watching me sift through a few years’ worth of crappily organized data. I’m not going to be doing anything more interesting than staring at a screen.

“Alright, alright. But I swear to god, Sammy. If anything comes up—if you feel even the slightest bit off, I mean if your  _ nose _ itches, you call me. Got it?”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says, already flicking through reports of the most recent deaths.

“Sam.”

He looks up this time, offers Dean a small smile that he hopes is reassuring, because he sure as hell doesn’t feel reassured. “Yeah, Dean. I will. Promise.”

*

Sam really, really hates these old databases. They’re all text-based and janky, barely a half-step up from the old school DOS-based stuff. He swears some of these systems were actually ported over, badly organized and making his eyes hurt.

There’s no way to cross-reference, so he’s settled for keeping a list. There’s a battered spiral notebook at his elbow, and he adds to it every few minutes, the list growing in dribbling fits and starts.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been by the time he finally surfaces for air, but it’s a normal type of lost time, time eaten up by focus and flow state. He knows how he got here. He flexes cramped fingers and pushes back from the desk with a sigh.

The room’s grown dark while he worked. The brighter hues of afternoon have given way to long, gloomy shadows, everything cast in a type of half light. He clicks on both bedside lamps and spreads out over his bed, basking in the warm glow, arms spread like a crucifix. His eyes slip shut before he drags them open with an effervescent sense of panic. It bubbles up from within, sudden as turning on a tap. His heart races, and he presses the heel of his palm hard into his chest, as if he could will it to slow down.

He’s afraid, he realizes with a jolt. Afraid to close his eyes, in case the next thing he sees isn’t the white plaster ceiling above him, Dean banging in the door smelling like bar smoke and complaining about  _ churches, _ man.  _ How are they always so creepy and same-y?  _ It’s easy to smile at the Dean in his head the way it’s never easy to smile at the real thing, anymore.

He doesn’t think that staying awake will stop it. He wasn’t asleep the last time it happened, he doesn’t think. He remembers The Three Stooges and Kentucky Fried. He remembers the curve of Dean’s cheek as he laughed, part of some great, cosmic ease that Sam can’t touch, could never—and then nothing. Lights out, that’s all she wrote.

Still, there’s comfort in clinging to the light. In the things he can see and hear and smell. His hand above his face, spread wide to cast shadows and catch the light. The faint mildew scent that pours from the ancient air conditioner. The far-off sound of another door closing in the corridor.

He lets it lull him, but not to sleep.

By the time Dean comes back, there are hollows beneath his eyes. He feels the weight of all the sleep he hasn’t gotten, his body telling tales of the three days he can’t remember.

“You look like crap, man,” Dean says, slinging his jacket over the nearest chair, plunking a six pack down on its seat.

“Thanks,” Sam says wryly.

It’s as close to  _ how are you _ as they come.

“I mean, really. Hell on toast, Sam.”

_ I was really worried. _

“Whatever, jerk.”

_ Me too. _

“Anything?” Sam asks.

Dean flaps his hand, landing hard on the bed nearest the door with his shoes still on, arm flung over his face. “At least two regulars at Our Mother of Sorrows haven’t shown up for mass in the last two weeks.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Our Mother of Sorrows, really?”

“Dunno what to tell you, man. Christians are morbid.” He stabs a finger in a vaguely Sam-ward direction. “You’re the one who likes that stuff.”

“Used to,” Sam says, soft. Mostly to himself.

Dean grunts, shifting his arm to look at Sam. “How about you, Sasquatch? Dig up anything on our saint-killer while holding down the fort?”

“List of names.” Sam jerks his thumb in the direction of his research tableaux. “Vics, mostly. A few possible perps. We can cross-reference them with your missing Catholics. Might help us narrow something down.”

“Tomorrow,” Dean says around a yawn. “Goddamn, I’m beat.”

“Tomorrow,” Sam agrees, nestling down into his own bed, inordinately pleased by the feel of scratchy motel textiles beneath his cheek.

It’s a little easier now to let go. At the right velocity, even falling feels like flying.

* * *

Sam wakes to an orgasm ripping its way through him, flashing lights behind his eyes, just that deep, bone-shattering good. He pants in the aftermath, disoriented and blind, sticky in his jeans.

It’s cold. It’s dark. Sam doesn’t know how he  _ got here, _ let alone where here is, let alone how he’s going to find his way out.

It’s so, so goddamn cold. Except in his mouth.

His teeth are slick, and there’s something warm in his mouth. Something salty and rich, oily, and he moans as he swallows it down. His dick twitches, spent and sensitive and still trying in vain to rise to the occasion. He feels strong. Strong and whole in a way he hasn’t in months—in  _ months— _ but he barely gets to ride the high because quick, adrenaline-soaked fear is riding hard on its heels.

“No,” he breathes, before he shuts himself up. Because he doesn’t know where he is or how he got here, which means he doesn’t know who else is here either.

He puts out his hand, and he runs into a wall, just inches in front of his face. He’s leaning back, propped up against another wall, and his mounting panic rises. So  _ small,  _ is he in a box, where is he, why—he fights down the urge to call for Dean.

No, not a wall. His hand finds a doorknob just inches to the left. His fingers close around it, and he prays.  _ Please, please, please open please. _

Miracle of miracles, it does.

It slides under his hand, slippery with something  _ (blood) _ and it takes some doing to get it open, but Sam tamps down his panic, and he turns it as silently as he’s able. He’s got his gun at the small of his back—if someone put him here, they did it in a hurry—and he gets a hand around its grip, using its muzzle to shove the door open slowly.

He’s in a closet, empty of everything but a rack of screwed-on hangers and a bolted-down safe. He’s in their room—his and Dean’s, and he feels a swell of relief just ahead of a tidal surge of  _ confusion, _ but no—

This isn’t his and Dean’s room. It just looks like it. Same motel, by the looks of it, same layout in mirror image, one bed rumpled, the other looking as pristine and untouched as if the maid service had just come by, but it looks okay. It looks fine. It doesn’t look like Sam’s hurt anybody—there’s a bag of cosmetics sprawled out over the table, a shiny silver Macbook sitting harmlessly under a pair of wide, tortoiseshell sunglasses, and this is fine. It’s fine. He’s covered in blood and sat in a closet, but it could be an accident—a- a fluke. He could’ve wandered in here confused, and it’s okay. It’s. He didn’t hurt anyone, and even if he did, that’s  _ demon _ blood, he can taste it, and maybe it was a dream, and—

There are feet sticking out beyond the furthest bed, tucked between the bed frame and the wall. There are fuck-me stilettos on those feet, black and pretty and sitting askew. There’s a devil’s trap on the ceiling, painted in spray paint, and when Sam gets closer, there is blood all over the floor. This carpet has never been white, not in years—decades, even—but now it’s soaked in black. Everything smells like copper, smells like sulfur, smells like rotting meat.

Sam gags.

The woman—because it is a woman—has pretty chestnut hair that’s sticky and short on one side where the knife went in. She’s got dry, unblinking green eyes and pink lips frozen in a scream. There are bite marks around the gash on her neck, in her wrist, creeping up her thigh, as if whoever was drinking her  _ (Sam) _ just couldn’t get at the filling fast enough.

He hasn’t retched on a case in a long, long time. He just barely makes it to the bathroom.

He thinks, inexplicably, of Ruby. She hasn’t crossed his mind in a long time now, not when there’s so many other, more pressing things to concern himself with. Maybe for a while he’d hoped that he left her memories on a chapel floor, bleeding out of him as surely as the life had left her body. He can still feel the warmth of her arms beneath his fingers, the place he’d held her down. The shock of it—she’d never seen it coming. Stupid, really. Unforgivable, kind of.

His mind is trying to distract itself, but this is. This is—

Shit.

He finds the phone in his pocket, thank god it’s still there. He has no idea what time it is, if it’s day or night. He has no idea how long he’s been gone, if Dean is worrying, if Dean is pissed. He fumbles the phone free and dials, fingers slick and sticky with blood.

Dean picks up on the second ring.

“Sammy.”

“Dean, I—” He swallows hard, throat clicking against itself. He thinks of Bobby’s panic room, of being locked up againagainagain, but maybe he deserves it. Maybe he. “Dean, I did something bad. I. You need to come get me.”

And there it is, that laser focus. That predator scenting for blood, and Sam leans into it, relaxes. “Sam, where are you? Stay on the phone, Sam. I swear to god, don’t you dare hang up.”

“The motel,” Sam gets out. He staggers to the front door, wrenching it open, and it’s day. Okay, it’s day. He disappeared when it was day (he thinks. he thinks he did) so maybe he hasn’t been gone long, maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe, maybe, maybe, despite the blood in his mouth, streaked across his face, the carpet, the walls, the  _ ceiling.  _ The brutalized body on the floor that says what he is—he’s a goddamn monster. “Room 112.”

Dean swears. Doesn’t ask what’s the matter. Doesn’t ask if he’s okay. “I’ll be right there.”

The line clicks dead, and Sam sits heavily on the pristine bed, the untouched one, bent double with his head in bloody hands.

He doesn’t bother closing the door. There’d be no use anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean swears and jams his phone back in his pocket, already taking off at a run. He pats the small of his back where his 1911 sits nestled, jams the flask of holy water into his pocket, when he already knows—he  _ knows _ it isn’t that kind of problem.

He knows, but he still hopes, and he wonders what it says about him that he’s half-hoping his little brother is possessed by a demon. By a ghost, something.  _ Something. _ Anything he can fight.

They’re staying in room 127. 112 is right down the hall, across the way past the parking lot.

The door is cracked open, and Dean goes in, gun drawn.

He knows. The second the smell hits his nose, he knows. Blood is distinctive. So is death. You don’t live to be as old as they are (comparatively speaking, on a hunter’s lifespan) without dreaming about the smell of death in your sleep. Death and sulfur, it reminds him of Hell, so yeah, he knows.

It doesn’t stop him from dropping to his knees, crouched in front of Sammy, going slow, slow, because he’s not sure this  _ is _ all Sam. Because he’s not sure what’s happening to Sam or what Sam’s capable of—not right now. Maybe not for a while.

Fuck if that doesn’t burn like hell.

“Sammy?” he tries cautiously.

No response.

“Hey, man, I need to make sure you’re not hurt. Is any of this blood yours?”

There’s no movement for the longest time. Sam shakes his head, a gesture so small Dean could’ve missed it if he wasn’t watching Sam like a hawk.

Dean’s irritated. Irritated and worried, and for all the times for Sam to go nonverbal. He’s so stubborn, such a pain in the ass, and—

And then Sam looks up. The look on his face is so devastated, so  _ heartbreaking _ that Dean just wants to bundle him up and carry him away out of yet another house fire, the extended wreckage that is their lives. Lucifer and the God Squad can go hang.

Dean touches him carefully, making sure Sam can see his hands because whatever else Sam is, he’s a hunter, and both of them have seen too much shit to do well with being startled. He runs his hands through Sam’s hair checking for wounds, for a cracked skull, and Sam whimpers beneath his hands. He palms the side of Sam’s neck then pats over his ribs, the muscled, solid curve of his chest and belly.

He checks for a concussion last, holding Sam’s face in his hands, holding steady even after Sam tries to pull away. (“Ease up, man.”)

He turns Sam’s face toward the light of the open door, the one neither of them had bothered to close. Anyone walking by is going to get a hell of a show, is going to book them a one-way ticket out of town with cops on their ass, again—he’ll fix it. They’ll have to wipe the room—Dean’s mind is already running down a list of the dozen things they need to do to make this go away—but first, this.

First checking Sammy’s eyes in the light, and thank god both pupils are the same size, even blown wide. Dean can’t tell if it’s from the fear he can smell practically coming off of Sam in waves, the familiar scent of brother-sweaty skin, or the shit that Sam has surely taken. Little bro’s drug of choice.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers, and Dean can’t. He just  _ can’t. _

“Don’t,” he says, more harshly than he really intends, but since when have intentions mattered—and Sam cringes away from him all the same.

Sam paws at him like a drunk, trying to curl up in the crook of Dean’s neck like he isn’t about two decades too old. Like he doesn’t have a good head of height on Dean, like he isn’t smearing the gore around between them, getting it all over Dean’s good jacket.

It isn’t even a question. Dean’s arms come up to encircle Sam automatically, even freaked out and slightly stunned, because that’s where they go. Of course it is.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says again, because when has he ever been any fucking good at listening to Dean anyway. He mouths it into Dean’s neck, petting at him in a way that’s really starting to freak Dean out for how frantic it is.

He notices the wet spot on the front of Sam’s jeans and feels a little ill, but he just strokes down the length of Sam’s back, soothing him like he used to. His hands still know the way.

“It’s okay,” Dean says. “It’s gonna be okay.”

*

Everything is dark—dark for a long time, and then it’s light. It’s starting to feel less like losing time and more like having it violently yanked out of his hands.

It’s always so bloody, the things he does when he can’t remember.

*

The parishioners that went missing from Our Mother of Sorrows were a Ms. Phyllis Day and a Dr. Max Cruz. Phyllis spent her life building one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in Pittsburgh, and Dr. Cruz was the retired chief of cardiology at a local hospital. He’d done three tours with Doctors Without Borders and volunteered at the local free clinic.

They’d both attended Our Mother religiously since the ‘60s, and both seemed like viable candidates for sainthood, if you asked Sam.

Local police records turned up an ongoing investigation into a John Doe who was found half a mile from the bank of the Little Conemaugh. The body was too mangled to be identified, but dental wear put the vic in his early 70s.

The body was found just a few days before the reports of bloody waters started.

No one could find Phyllis.

*

The facts were comforting. Working a case was comforting. If he was working, it meant he was still okay. Crazy people didn’t work. Crazy people didn’t carry guns.

If they were working, then it meant they were still doing some good—it meant Sam was still doing good, and that was so, so important right now. It was the most important, even if Sam couldn’t remember quite why that was.

He catches the way Dean looks at him sometimes (all the time; he looks at you all the time now). There’s a line in the middle of Dean’s forehead that never used to be, as if it sprouted overnight, watered by every time Sam disappears out from under both of their noses.

Dean becomes his lodestone, his true north. He always has been, Sam figures. It’s just become more literal. Sam watches him more, now. He watches him all the time.

He blinks, and it all disappears again. 


	5. Chapter 5

God, it really does taste foul. Dean gags on it, spitting to get the taste of it out of his mouth. He isn’t trying to put Sam on. It really is that bad.

“Don’t know how the fuck you can drink this stuff.”

Sam shrugs. “Are you okay?”

_ “Fuck _ no,” springs to his lips immediately. Sam flinches back, and Dean considers—really considers, taking stock of his body. He feels—well, not  _ good. _ He’s got a hell of a lump rising on the swell of his cheek where Sam clocked him one, and something’s funny with his leg. He’s got a belly full of demon blood that’s threatening to rebel, but under it— “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Sam.”

He actually does feel pretty good.

Sam lets out a sigh of relief, and Dean cards his fingers through the back of his hair, looking around the shitty little squat house where they’re sprawled out over the floor. The light in here is terrible, and Dean chalks it up to small favors. It smells in here, fetid and human. The floor is filthy with things besides dirt, and Dean doesn’t really want to see them all that closely.

“Now how about we get out of here?” He says it carefully, which means he says it casual.

Sam’s been acting strange ever since the motel. Since he sucker punched Dean and cuffed him, since he worked him into the car kicking and twisting. (“Dean, calm down! Jesus,” as if Dean was the crazy one).

Sam shakes his head, head cocked like some kind of hound, like he can hear something in the distance. “Not yet.”

“You waiting for someone?” Dean asks, with all the humor he can muster.

Sam doesn’t answer.

“You got any more surprises planned for me? Gonna pile-drive me or something? Give me another shiner to match this one, any more surprise meals?”

Sam cracks a small smile. A normal smile, like it’s just any other day. “No, Dean. Of course not.”

Dean waits for a while before he shrugs, deciding to get comfortable. He gets his feet out from under him and sits on his ass with a groan. He leans against the wall, legs stretched out akimbo. “So what’s up with you lately, man? You plan on sharing with the class?”

Sam doesn’t come to sit next to him, but he does ease up on the intense, high alert vibes just a little. He sits on the ground, knees hugged up to his chest, looking so heartbreakingly young. He draws with a finger in the dust on the floor—Dean can just make it out by the shitty half-light that leaks from boarded-up windows. It gives him a chill—his neat-freak brother.

“Do you remember that summer in Maine?”

It’s unexpected—the sunny, coastal memories so far from their current dark and dank surroundings. It takes Dean a minute to call it to mind—the cottage by the lake. The blueberry farms with clusters of fruit, white shading into dusky blue that went on for miles.

He grunts. “The werewolf hunt that sent us all up and down the coast. What about it?”

Sam shakes his head. “Nothing. Just thinking.” He tilts his head again, as if he’s listening for something else. Whether he finds it or not, Dean doesn’t know, but in the end he smiles, a little flit of a thing across his face.

“Remember how frustrated Dad was?” Sam asks.

Dean snorts softly despite himself. “Thought he was gonna blow a gasket.”

Sam huffs a laugh. “Yeah. The neighbors had that dog.”

“Asher. I remember. You and him were inseparable. I think the Washingtons thought you were going to kidnap their dog.”

“Might’ve, if I thought I could get away with it.”

“You wanted a dog so bad that year.”

“Wanted a lot of things.”

There’s something in Sam’s voice. Dean looks sharply at him, but there’s nothing to give him away. His face is open and guileless, and he watches Dean right back.

“Sam—”

There’s a rustle at the door. Sam hears it too, and they’re suddenly on high alert, just like flicking a switch. Sam draws a gun out of his waistband to go with the one already cradled in his hand. He passes it over to Dean, Dean’s hands already molding around the familiar grip.

“Hello?” Sam calls, and Dean has just enough time to think it’s strange that Sam is calling out to anyone.

* * *

The thing is, short of tying Sam up, Dean doesn’t know what to do with him. He keeps  _ disappearing. _ The specifics of it are variable. There’s no pattern that Dean can discern, and fuck if that doesn’t drive him up the wall.

Sam might be gone for hours—days, that one time. Thinking about it still makes the hair rise on the back of Dean’s neck. But sometimes he’s gone for as little as fifteen minutes, the length of a smoke break, if either of them were that kind of self-destructive.

Sometimes he thinks it would be easier if they were. The normal self-destructive, the kind that scars and corrupts lung tissue, leaves you wheezing and on chemo in some far-distant future that neither of them were likely to live to see.

“Sam?”

Sam looks up from the computer. He’s been researching nonstop for the past few hours, pulling up ugly-ass websites that look like they’re stuck in the early 2000s, glaring backgrounds and ominous midi files blaring in the background.

“Yeah?” He looks up. His fingers find the mute button by rote, putting an end to a truly annoying, tinny version of ‘O Death.’ He looks tired, but fine. Normal. Present.

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

Sam leans back in his chair, the bulk of him making cheap, mass-produced joints creak. He rolls his neck, sighing as something cracks and pops. “You want Chinese for dinner? I saw a place on Jefferson while we were driving. It’s supposed to be good.”

Dean shrugs. “What the hell, I could do with some egg rolls.”

Sam stands with another crack, hands already snagging the keys off the edge of the table. “You got it. Lemon chicken or kung pao?”

Dean cuts in, as smooth as honey. “How about we order in? I saw there’s a Bruce Lee marathon on this afternoon. It’s probably still going. Enter the Dragon? Fists of Fury?”

“The restaurant is fifteen minutes away. I’ll be there and back before Bruce even works up a sweat.”

Sam brushes past him, still headed for the door, and Dean reaches out and grabs him by the arm automatically. He grips him with enough force to spin him around.

“Sam.”

He sees the moment realization dawns in Sam’s eyes. “You don’t trust me.”

“No, dude, it’s not that.”

“No, it totally is. You’ve never trusted me, and you still don’t now.”

“Can you blame me?” It explodes out of Dean before he can think better of it. “Seriously, Sam. It’s not as if you have the best track record lately, I mean,  _ Ruby,  _ for starters.”

Sam slams his hand down on the table, and Dean ignores it. “That’s what this is about. It’s about Ruby.”

“Kind of, yeah. For starters. Dude, I keep finding you dazed and confused, waking up in pools of blood.”

_ “Demon _ blood—”

“Yeah, but what if one day it isn’t? What if next time it’s yours, or someone else’s.”

Sam is looking at him tense, like he’s spoiling for a fight. Something dark in Dean itches for Sam to take a swing, his knuckles that want to beat back. He talks to cover it up, that shitty, shameful urge.

“You can’t honestly tell me that you’re okay with this,” Dean pushes.

“I’m not,” Sam says quietly. “But there’s no other option. You can’t keep an eye on me 24/7 forever.”

“God, how did you get to be so dramatic? It’s not forever. Just, y’know, until we can get a handle on this thing. Until we can figure out what’s going on. Look, I’ll call Bobby in the morning, and maybe he’ll have some idea of how to help—”

He would. He’d call Bobby, like he should’ve done in the first place. Like he would’ve if he wasn’t wracked with so much guilt over what happened to him, all because of them.

“Don’t call Bobby.”

Dean was ready for a blow. He wasn’t ready for Sam to leave, to just bow out while a fight was brewing, leaving Dean all alone with his frustrated emotions and nowhere to put them.

“Sam! Sammy!”

He should’ve been, Dean reflects bitterly. After all, Sam never let go of the keys. That’s what Sam does. He runs.

*

He said he’d wait til morning, but that was before his amnesiac brother went AWOL.

He rings Bobby as soon as the growl of his baby’s engine fades into the distance.

_ This is Robert Singer. I can’t come to the phone right now. If this is an emergency, call 911. If this is the other kind of emergency— _

He hangs up.

He tosses the phone on the bed and runs his hands through his hair with a growl.

*

Sam comes back 45 minutes later, hair and coat damp from the downpour outside. Even the short jog from the parking lot to the covered walkway was enough to get him good, his plastic bags of Chinese food saved only because he tucked them into his body while he ran. He lets himself in, talking before the door even shuts behind him.

“The place was packed. You wouldn’t believe the line.” The silence in the room pulls him up short. “What happened to Bruce Lee?”

Dean shrugs.

His gun is in pieces on the table as he cleans its parts methodically. His own research is neatly tucked into one corner, laptop folded shut and papers organized more or less how he left them.

It’s going to be like that, then.

There’s no space on the table, so he puts the bags of food on the nearest nightstand, nudging the knife and pocket change out of the way. He unties the knot and grabs one of the cartons, a little soggy with damp heat and grease. He grabs a fork and sprawls out over his bed, back leaning up against the pillows stacked at the headboard.

He takes a bite of food, chicken chow mein with steamed vegetables—the kind with those flat ridged carrots you can only ever find in Chinese restaurants, and he always wonders how they get them that way. It’s hot and steaming and good, loaded with salt and probably MSG, and he moans as he licks the gravy off his fork. He shoves another couple bites in his mouth before leaning over to snag the remote from Dean’s nightstand.

He turns on the TV and flicks around until he finds the marathon Dean was talking about.

It’s a movie he hasn’t seen very often, so it takes him a few minutes to recognize it as Circle of Iron. He settles into the glorious, cheesy grit of it, shoveling greasy noodles into his mouth while he watches.

Dean settles on the bed opposite before too long, lured by the smell of takeout and the punch-punch-kick sounds of cheesy action violence. Sam’s careful not to look his way, not to let the smile that wants to come peeking out show. No sudden movements—the first rule of gentling any wild animal.

Dean squints at the screen, reaching out to snag one of the cartons for himself. “Is that Carradine?”

“Yep.”

“Man, how does he still look exactly the same?”

“Maybe he’s a witch,” Sam suggests.

Dean laughs, but Sam can see the gears turning. He shakes it off, loading a few sticky, gleaming morsels of chicken on his fork before popping it in his mouth with a groan. “Don’t ruin Carradine for me.”

Sam laughs.

Dean snaps his fingers, waving a hand in Sam’s direction. “Stop bogarting the noodles, man. Hand ‘em over.”

Sam does, passing over the half-eaten carton before digging around in one of the bags for something else to eat. He finds the folded paper bag of Dean’s egg rolls, already starting to get soggy from the ambient steam. He stuffs one in his mouth before Dean can complain about the thievery.

They eat in companionable silence, the cold glow of the television and the spread of food before them easing over the earlier tension. It can hardly be called a fight—not when their real fight so often come to blows.

Dean leans back with a sigh at last, hand coming up to pat his belly, rounded with the slightest swell of food. He burps loudly. “Man, that was good.”

Sam hums in agreement. They settle onto their separate beds, the TV lulling them both.

Sam looks over, his eyes caught by the splay of Dean’s fingers over his belly. His hand is moving now. He rubs at it idly, the edges of his shirt just barely edging up. Sam doesn’t know why such a thing should catch his notice, why it should be as mesmerizing as it is.

“Earth to Sam.”

Sam looks over at Dean, eyebrows raised, jerked from his reverie. “What?”

“I got something on my shirt or something?”

Sam shakes his head. He only considers it for a moment before making up his mind and getting up. It’s a small room, the beds close together. He’s at the side of Dean’s bed in barely more than a step.

“Shove over,” he says.

“What?” Dean asks, but Sam waits, and Dean does.

He moves over, far enough for Sam to fit himself on the bed at Dean’s side.

“Got your own bed, don’t you?” Dean grumbles, but he makes no move to deter Sam. He lifts his arm so Sam can settle beneath it.

They haven’t done this in a long time. Sam’s surprised Dean doesn’t raise a fuss, but maybe he shouldn’t be.

Dean doesn’t ask about it, and Sam doesn’t tell. They’re not snuggling, exactly. Sam just fits himself in real close—close enough so he can feel the rise and fall of his brother’s chest against his arm.

“What’s gotten into you?” Dean asks, and Sam can only shrug.

They watch the rest of the movie, and everything feels alright.


	6. Chapter 6

In the end, they find their killer of saints. In this respect, at least, it’s not their kind of thing at all. It wasn’t a witch with a spell, a vamp thirsty for blood, a demon out to stick it to the feathered douchebags upstairs. Hell, it wasn’t even a monster with a sweet tooth.

In the end, it’s just a man: Roger McDowell, a used car salesman. 

The police tracked him to his suburban home, and the moron had tried to hoof it on foot. He hadn’t got far with the APB out on his ass, and he’d been shot in pursuit. He died at Johnstown General a few hours later.

Not long after that, the blood had dried up. The rivers had turned into rivers again. Local limnologists were confused, apparently. Dean just learned what a limnologist even is. Sam had spent the morning telling him about the members of the EPA that were flying in from D.C. to test all the bodies of water in the area, both manmade and natural.

“They’re calling it unusually high levels of cadmium,” Sam says. “Worried it could be toxic.”

Dean scoffs. “Cadmium. Right.”

He yanks the car door open and climbs in. He can’t help running his hands over his baby’s wheel, her sleek leather upholstery. It’s been a while since they stayed in a town for this long. He was starting to get itchy, anxious to move on. He knew Sam was starting to feel it too. He can tell by the way Sam settles himself into the passenger seat with a sigh.

No matter how far they go, no matter what kind of mess they get themselves into, this is still home.

“You think it’s over?” Dean asks.

“I guess,” Sam says. “I guess it just wanted blood.”

Dean cranks the engine and checks his mirror before peeling out of the parking lot. “Yeah, I guess. Doesn’t really feel like a win, though, does it?”

“No. Not really.”

They burn rubber and leave the town behind. Dean knows that whatever’s wrong with Sam, it’s not the place. It’s not the town that did it, but all the same, he’ll breathe easier when Johnstown is far, far in the rearview.

*

He drives west for a while. They cross two state lines before Sam asks where they’re going somewhere around Indiana.

Dean shrugs. “Figured we’d just drive. Maybe we’ll hit a case.”

“You’re not going to Bobby’s.” It’s somewhere between a question and a statement—could go either way, really, depending on how bad Dean wants to fight.

He’s not in the mood right now. He’s tired, maybe worn down from that bad break of a case or maybe just worn down. He hasn’t been sleeping.

It’s hard at the best of times, but now that he’s constantly waiting for Sam to pull a runner, it’s next to impossible.

“Not going to Bobby’s,” he confirms.

The blacktop is eaten up below their wheels, sugar maple giving way to tall, crested pines. Sam’s so quiet that Dean spares him a glance, hoping he’ll see that his brother’s fallen asleep. No such luck. Sam looks back at him without even the hint of a smile, shadows gathering dark beneath his eyes.

Dean thinks he isn’t the only one who hasn’t been sleeping.

He likes the quiet rumble of the road, likes the hum of the engine and the way everything gets so dead quiet, even with the windows down, but this silence between them feels deadly. Dean flicks on the cassette player and cranks it up.

If Sam has anything to say about it, it’s lost beneath a wall of sound.

He can feel Sam sulking. He makes it through half of the tape before clicking it off with a sigh.

“What’s going on with you?” he asks.

Sam sighs and stares out the window, hand out to catch the breeze. “Wish I could tell you,” he says with that ragged, limping smile. “Wish I knew,” he says, more to himself than anything.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean says, because he has to say something. “We will.”

“Sure, Dean,” Sam says.

He’s never felt more like putting his fist through something.

*

It’s not that Sam’s a—an  _ addict, _ although it’s a little bit that too. A lot that, if he’s being totally, 100% honest.

Finding his brother waking up confused, bloody-mouthed and high out of his mind is—yeah, it’s fucking alarming—but it’s something else too. If Dean is completely honest with himself, the kind of honest he only gets after enough whiskey to muddle his brain, to make all his thoughts go loose and syrupy and easy—it’s the fact that Sam goes somewhere he can’t. Somewhere Dean can’t protect him, somewhere Dean gets left behind.

It starts something clawing up in the deepest part of him, this panicky, gnawing terror. He’ll never admit it, not for anything, but the feeling waits for him on moonless nights filled with too much idleness, the nights when the silence comes to choke him.

*

Sam knows he’s drinking it. If waking up in pools of gore wasn’t enough of a hint, he’d still be able to feel it. He feels it in how much better he feels, how much the constant, relentless ache has been beaten back by the satisfaction of getting what he needs. It’s wrong, but he feels almost grateful to that other self, the one who walks around when he blacks out—the one who apparently finds demons to keep them both fed—to protest too much.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t try as hard to stop it as he should.

He’s not  _ lying _ about the reason he doesn’t want to go to Bobby’s—he really doesn’t want to bother him. He really doesn’t think they should, doesn’t think they have any right, not after everything that’s happened. Sam thinks of Bobby’s legs and feels vaguely ill. Or maybe that’s just the withdrawal. It’s been a while, and this, too, is familiar.

He can’t just go out and snag a demon like a juice box, not that he wants to—he doesn’t. Dean would never forgive him, and Ruby’s certainly not coming around to fix him up. Still, his bones don’t fit quite right under his skin. They feel too big, domed edges threatening to poke through at all the joins and angles of him. He refuses to scratch, but he thinks his skin might start to peel away like paper at any moment. He feels like the proverbial baby bird, mouth open, wings out.

He thinks of Bobby’s panic room, of cuffs and a smelly, bare mattress. Of warding and inches-thick iron everywhere. He shudders.

No, he doesn’t want to go to Bobby’s.

Dean smells so good lately. It’s—well, it’s  _ weird,  _ is what it is. At first, Sam’s not sure he isn’t imagining it. Maybe whatever’s happening inside his brain is affecting his other senses as well. Maybe it’s like a stroke, maybe he needs a doctor.

Maybe.

That doesn’t do a hell of a lot to explain the reason Dean smells positively edible. It’s not that his scent has changed, exactly. Not at all. It’s just Sam’s reaction to it that’s changed. Sam’s need to press himself close and rub himself all over Dean.

He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s already done so many freaky things; he really doesn’t need to see the look on Dean’s face if he cracked and finally did  _ that. _ He says finally like he’s wanted it. He has, he guesses, in a dim, vague, unformed way.

He’s had his childhood crushes, just like anyone else. He had his one big gotta-have-them-or-I’ll-die teenage melodrama. His was just, you know, on his brother. He’s thought about it. He left it behind like so many other things—like everything, all the things he’s never been allowed to keep. Jess, going up in flames tacked to the ceiling like a moth.

The point is, he hadn’t thought about it, hasn’t wanted it in years, but now—

Now he’s squirming in his seat, hands pressed flat against the tops of his jeans, staring out the window with nostrils flaring and trying not to be  _ obvious _ about it. His fucking life, man. He actually thinks this might be worse than waking up covered in blood on a weekly basis.

Dean looks at him but doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask  _ you good? _ in that low, gruff tone, and thank god for small favors. He thinks he might actually— he would— 

God, when did this car get so small?

They drive without stopping. When they need to crash, they do it by the side of the road, the car carefully tucked away around some blind turn, hidden in a copse of trees. They pass every motel by. Dean doesn’t offer to check into one of them, and Sam doesn’t ask.

At night, Dean takes the front seat, and Sam takes the back. He’s too big for this now. Far too long. His knees are bent, his feet jammed against the car door. It’s hot and stuffy, even with the windows cracked. It’s hideously hard to sleep.

Sam huffs and turns on his side, making the car creak under his weight. He turns so his nose is pressed into the leather seat, back turned to Dean.

The smell is driving him crazy. He snakes his hand down the front of his pants, over his jeans—not to do anything, probably. He couldn’t get away with that. Wouldn’t, even if he could. He doesn’t  _ want _ to anymore, but he presses the butt of his palm into his dick just to take off the edge.

He hears Dean shift up front, his breathing too fast for sleep. Sam freezes, feeling caught in the act. He makes his own breathing slow, deep and even, and oh, he is going crazy. He really is.

“What’s it feel like to you? When you.” His voice comes out hoarse. His throat is dry. Sam licks his lips.

The sound of creaking leather, more shifting. “When I what?”

“Drink them.”

The car is so silent you could hear a pin drop. It’s the first time he’s said it, the first time either of them have acknowledged it— _ it— _ what Sam does to him. Dean’s breath speeds up, quicker and quicker.

“I—” He clears his throat. “I don’t know, Sam. And anyway, you know already, don’t you?” He laughs, and there’s something dark in it. “Hell, I’d think you know better than me.”

Sam shakes his head, although Dean can’t see it. “I don’t. Not really. I know what it’s like for me. Doesn’t mean I know what it’s like for you.”

“Why do you want to?”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. I just do.”

Dean’s breath—it sounds wet, for a second. Open-mouthed and heavy. Sam can’t see him. Both of their heads down on the seats like this, they could be alone, except for the sound of each other. “It feels like being awake. Like being more than awake—like your eyes are open for the first time in your life and all the times you thought they were before, you were just wrong. Like you didn’t know what colors looked like until right that moment. Like- like you didn’t know what seeing was.”

Sam sits with that, with the heavy weight of it, the  _ rightness. _ He sits and lets it soak straight into him, and he pushes his hand down against his dick, and he moans.

“Dean.”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah, Sammy?”

“That’s beautiful.” He manages to say it with a straight face.

Dean snorts, and then Sam cracks. He laughs, taking a joke at his brother’s expense, and this is—yeah, this is good. He might be going crazy, suffocating on goddamn pheromones, or whatever, but this right here is exactly what he remembers.

“Fuckin’ asshole, man,” Dean says, muffled like he has his arm hooked up over his face.

“Takes one to know one, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

They sling insults, roughhousing like brothers without bothering to move. Their laughter lingers, and eventually the words peter off until there’s nothing but the quiet again. Sam rolls onto his other side, heart facing the front of the car, where Dean lies. He falls asleep with his hand stretched out, open like he’s trying to touch.

* * *

They don’t stop in a proper motel until they’re halfway across the Midwest. Dean is running, pushing the pedal to the metal like there’s something on their ass, and Sam doesn’t comment on it. He feels it too, that need for flight. He settles into the passenger seat and lets Dean drive. They fill up on gas, on fast food to go and plates of food from greasy spoons.

Sam sinks low in his seat, hair pushed in his eyes to block out the light. He naps whenever he gets too tired, day or night, as Dad’s tape collection keeps them steady company. It goes without saying that Sam isn’t allowed to drive anymore.

The shakes have gotten worse, crawling up his body, his restless legs into his heart. He needs it bad. Surely Dean can see it by the way he claws his fingernails into the meat of his thigh, and on one memorable occasion, the leather-wrapped door handle.

“Hey. Watch the upholstery.”

“Dean,” Sam says, desperate and thin.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

_ “Dean.” _

The joking smile falls off Dean’s face. He looks over at Sam, worried. He reaches his free hand out, the one that isn’t gripping the wheel, to feel the back of Sam’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“Hurts,” Sam whines, plaintive.

“I know, buddy. ‘S okay. You’re good, right? How bout I find somewhere to stop for the night—next joint we pass, alright?”

It won’t help. Of course it won’t help. There’s one thing Sam needs, and they both know it, but the low, soothing tones of Dean’s voice help just a little. That tenor rumble that followed Sam throughout his childhood and into his dreams.

Sam catches Dean’s hand when he goes to pull it away, and Dean doesn’t fight it. Sam doesn’t hold it or anything stupid like that. He just presses it against his side so Dean can’t escape, Dean’s fingers lightly curled in Sam’s lap.

They’re in the middle of a deserted backroads highway somewhere in Nebraska. It’s another hour before they run across any sort of lodging, a small, run-down inn that looks desperately in need of a spit shine, even in the relative dark of the country night.

“Sammy,” Dean says, shaking him a little by the knee.

“I’m up,” Sam says.

He climbs out of the car, every bone aching. He follows Dean into the lobby, a tiny room with a glass door, where a ratty old AC blows tepid air and a long-faced teenager doodles in a steno pad.

“One room, two beds,” Dean says.

The teenager pops his gum, looking up, bored. “All out of doubles. You want a single? Queen-sized bed.”

“You’re out of beds  _ here? _ You even got enough townspeople to fill up these rooms?”

The teenager shrugs. He scratches the side of his greasy nose, and Sam says, “Dean.”

“Fine,” Dean says to the kid.

Money and keys change hands. Sam watches while he sways. The room feels like it’s swimming, the ground looming like it’s threatening to rise up to meet him, and Sam thinks  _ what. _

The kid squints at him, says, “Hey, buddy, your friend on something or what?”

“None of your business,” Dean says.

“Cause I can’t let you stay here if—”

“I’m fine,” Sam says, shooting the kid a worn smile. “I’m not on anything, I promise. Scout’s honor.”

The kid shrugs again, turns back to his doodle. “Last door on the left,” he says.

Neither of them say thank you. The electronic door bell splits into his skull on the way out.

“You’re no kind of scout,” Dean says, and Sam just shrugs.

“Close enough.”

They find their way to the room, and Dean lets them inside. It’s a relief to fall onto the bed. Nothing’s stopped spinning, but at least if he lies down, it all spins around him. A fixed point, a turning universe. Sam rolls onto his side.

“Thanks,” he says.

Dean lets their bags slip off his shoulder and onto the floor. “For what?”

Sam shrugs. He doesn’t answer.

Dean turns off the light, and a second later, Sam feels a warm body sliding into bed beside him. Neither one of them bother to strip off their outer layers. Even their shoes stay on. By private consensus, it seems to be a night for giving up. Even brushing his teeth feels like an impossibility.

A big window faces out into the parking lot. The curtains are cheap and thin. Even drawn, phosphorescent light leaks into the room, yellow and sickly. Sam can see Dean’s face from this close-up, an armspan away on the opposite pillow. He can see the sheen of sweat at his temples, the overripe bruises beneath his eyes.

He reaches out to touch. The thin skin feels hot beneath his fingertips, the skin that holds his brother’s eye.

“You’re hurting too,” he says.

He gets a noncommittal grunt in reply. “Go to sleep, Sammy.”

It doesn’t escape his notice that neither of them bothered to salt the windows and doors. He wonders if they’re both hoping for the same thing, way deep down.


	7. Chapter 7

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, darkness hovering over the surface of the deep, but God was apparently a fucking asshole who left them all here to hang, so whatever.

Sam growls under his breath, rubbing his temples and trying to figure his way through it again. The last thing he remembers was sitting on the bed with his brother, the detritus of a meal scattered around them like so much flotsam, his belly just this side of uncomfortably full with Dean groaning beside him. He remembers the spork had shattered, black plastic shards impaling his palm. He remembers Dean’s hands on his, holding him steady and digging out the pieces while he hissed in pain. He remembers—

Nothing. Fade to black.

No matter how much Sam scratches and scratches at the black hole of his memory, there’s nothing there. It’s maddening.

And God said “Let there be light,” and Dean turned on the overhead lights and burned the fuck out of Sam’s retinas. Everything is green. There’s an armchair in the corner, threadbare emerald velvet, and Sam thinks he can smell it from here. It smells like smoke and bodies, smells like the chemical tang of aspirin.

He groans, flinging a hand over his eyes and turning his face back into the pillow.

“Rise and shine.”

_ “Why?” _ Sam groans into his pillow. The words come out muffled.

“Daylight’s burning. C’mon. Up and at ‘em.”

He doesn’t mention that there’s nowhere to go. There’s no case on. He’s tired. A week of rough living has been taking its toll on the space behind his eyes. There’s a buzzing in his brain.

The front door opens and closes and Sam is left alone, and he drags the pillow over his face, bright fucking light and all. If Dean cares so much, he can drag Sam out of bed himself.

*

Coffee. Stale bagels. A smear of blueberry cream cheese that tastes like plastic, faker than the powdered creamer Sam dumps into his styrofoam cup. It helps, having eaten and drunk. Not much, not enough, but you can’t have everything.

He feels like shit.

They’re walking around the motel parking lot, hoofing it out to the road to see that there’s really, truly nothing here. No town within walking distance, not even a gas station.

There’s wet, tall grass churned with mud. It rained sometime in the night. There’s a two-lane gravel road, and not a soul drives by the entire time they’re standing at the turn-off like a couple of yokels.

The air is getting chilly. It nips at the tips of Sam’s fingers in a reminder of winter. They’ll have to hit a thrift store soon, he thinks. Gloves, scarves, hats. They could both use new socks. He starts a mental checklist, figures how much pool they’ll have to hustle between now and then.

It’s not bad for now. For now, his jacket keeps out the worst of the chill. He wraps his hand around his coffee cup, soaking up the ambient heat. When one hand gets lonely, too cold or hot, he switches.

“Figured we could drive until we hit the coast. I hear California’s nice this time of year.”

Sam’s lips quirk up in a half smile, unsurprised but pleased to know that Dean’s mind has been following the same tracks as his.

“Sure,” he says.

A bluebird lights on a long tendril of grass across the street. It seems too flimsy to hold it, the stalk bowing towards the earth. The bird flaps its wings, getting its balance and holding itself upright until its perch stabilizes. It calls a shrill song, a series of chirps, and another bird answers from the trees. It goes on like that, call and response, until the second bird shows itself, joining the first on its perch. Sam watches them find their balance again.

Dean looks at his face, follows his eyes.

“Birdwatching, Sam? That’s a new level of girly, even for you.”

Sam shrugs. “Gotta watch something.”

Dean takes a sip of his coffee—cream, sugar, just like Sam. “Besides me, you mean.”

Sam could cough. Could choke and sputter, make a dozen denials. He takes a long drink of his coffee instead—stalling for time, he knows. Call it what it is. He watches the birds launch themselves in the air, disappearing in a twinkle of blue on blue. He shrugs.

“So, California?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “California.”

*

Gering is a sleepy town, and they don’t stick around for more than a night. Dean is anxious to get back on the road. He doesn’t say so, but Sam can see it in the fidgety nervousness, in the hand tapping out endless basslines on his thigh.

Sam doesn’t care much if they go or stay. He feels like shit, just absolutely miserable, and that’s going to be the same no matter where they are, so. He can ride it out in the car or in one of a hundred thousand motel rooms. It hardly matters.

Dean’s faring better than him, but not by much.

They’re in a bad way. Whatever compulsion takes Sam, whatever blackouts make all of this somehow, twistedly  _ okay _ aren’t reporting for duty. He grits his teeth so he doesn’t scream.

Two impulses war in him when he looks at Dean. Dean with the clenched jaw and clammy skin, the pinched look between his eyes. He’s caught between guilt—he did this to Dean—and a dark satisfaction he doesn’t want to examine too closely. Now Dean knows how it feels. Now Dean is swimming in the mire and muck of this with him.

Now maybe Dean will understand.

But they pack up and hit the road, and neither of them breathe a word about the sick suffering brewing between them.

*

The next time they stop comes sooner than the first, two nights in the car before Dean’s pulling into another motel, this one with an actual parking lot, stalls marked off in perfectly gridded white lines. A lighted sign on a tall post reads  _ vacancy. _

There’s no discussion about it, no  _ do you maybe wanna. _ Just another check-in, another key card, another plywood door with a tarnished brass number hanging from it.

He tries to remember how long the withdrawals lasted last time and finds that he can’t.

There are two beds in this hotel room, but Sam ignores the second. Dean gets into bed without even the pretense of turning on the TV, and Sam crawls in right after him, molding himself to Dean’s side, bodies pressed together between layers of flannel.

Dean’s arm comes up to cradle him, to rub rough fingertips into his scalp, and Sam huffs a sigh against Dean’s collarbone.

He closes his eyes and prays for blood.

* * *

The coast is beautiful. It’s white and foaming, reflecting the austere glare of the sun. It’s cold as hell, though. Sam privately thinks that if it was sun and warmth Dean was after, they could’ve done better than San Francisco. Santa Cruz is warm during the winter. Sam had spent Fall Break there once, soaking up the sun and letting it thaw him through.

He’s hungry—not that kind of hungry. Dean’s been keeping them well-fed on that score, and Sam still can’t really get used to that. He’s the other kind of hungry, plain old ordinary kind, stomach grumbling loud, making him feel hollowed out and shell-like.

“You need to eat?” Dean asks, turning a sharp eye toward him.

If possible, Dean’s been even more attuned to him lately. It’s one part unsettling and one part the most comforting thing that Sam has ever known.

He hears what Dean’s really asking and shakes his head. “It can wait.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Dean says. “I hear there’s a place by Fisherman’s Wharf that does soup in bread bowls.”

There’s a note of hopeful longing in Dean’s voice that makes Sam laugh. “Dude, Fisherman’s Wharf? What a tourist trap.”

“So? We’re tourists, aren’t we?”

“Huh.”

It strikes him for the first time that they are. They’d driven out here for no other reason than to follow the sun, to get away.  _ Running, _ his mind helpfully supplied. Still, if the things they’re running from were darker than most, it doesn’t escape Sam’s notice that they’re doing what people do the world over: trying to put geological distance between themselves and their own worst memories, the worst parts of themselves.

_ The worst parts of myself, _ he amends. Dean may be in this, but only because Sam dragged him in. It’s good to remember where the blame truly lies.

“Bread bowls, huh?” Sam says, and it’s all the assent Dean needs.

A happy grin breaks across his face. “Bread bowls and chowder, Sammy. I hear the bowls are as big as your head. Always wanted to try it—”

Dean talks on the walk back to the car, the desolate beach feeling haunted as the fog rolls in off the waves. Down the way, a mother watches a small child run in and out of the water, shrieking at the cold. His screams of delight echo down the beach. The family’s beach blanket seems so bright in the cool, bleached tones of a San Francisco winter.

Dean talks and talks, the sound of his voice filling the dead air, Atlas with the world on its shoulders, as if voice alone could stem the tide—as if it could push any of this back.

*

The bread bowls were a good idea, Sam has to admit.

They’re sitting outside on a pair of chairs lined up along the pier, the painted metal of public seating cold under his ass. Sam can feel the chill radiating up, even through his jeans, but the food is hot, the clam chowder thick and creamy as it slides down his throat. He scrapes up the last of it with a sigh, tearing up what’s left of his bread bowl half-heartedly.

They don’t talk. At this point, there isn’t much to say. Sam’s content to people-watch, the pier strangely crowded for how shitty the weather is.  _ Thrift store, _ he thinks.  _ Gloves, scarves, hats. _ His fingers feel numb, stiff and achy beneath it. There’s a kind of neat cleanliness to the pain, the stab and pull of it.

To their left, bakers work at a long glass window with serious concentration. Bread in the shapes of animals line the storefront window—bears and alligators, mice and men. It must be strange, Sam thinks, to do your work so out in the open. He wonders what it feels like, to be an animal pinned under glass. He wonders if they go home and curl up in their own bathtubs, in their own beds—after the city, after the subway. He wonders if it’s a relief to finally be unseen.

Dean’s already finished with his food, watching Sam. Sam gives up on the remainder of his bread. It’s soaked through, soggy and getting cold, and he’s full anyway. They toss it in a trashcan along with the rest of their garbage, and seagulls descend on the prize almost immediately.

Sam sucks his fingers clean and wipes them on his pants, and they start walking, taking off in some direction, toward the mountains rising in the distance, studded with glittering, expensive houses. Parking is highway robbery here, and they shouldn’t leave the car for too long, but neither of them mentions it. They walk up and up, past old men playing chess in a tiny park.

Chinatown is heralded by a great red, ornate gate, smack-dab on the street. Golden dragons slither up its sides, and Sam’s head turns to examine them as they walk past without stopping. The smells are at once unfamiliar and comforting—spices he doesn’t recognize, the scent of urine and roasting meat. He walks with his hands in his pockets, looking at the wares displayed on tables out front, slippers with colorful ribbon thongs, paper parasols, keychains that say ‘I heart SF.’

They walk aimlessly, the way anyone else would get lost. Their internal compasses are too iron-clad for that, but it’s nice to pretend.

Dean stops in front of a bakery, empty of people, with a sparse pastry case. He glances in the window, something like longing on his face. It’s just for a second and then he’s moving again, shoulders angled away, the brown leather of his jacket snagging on something in Sam’s senses.

Suddenly it’s all just too unbearable. The fact that Dean could want something—want and not have—is too much. It’s a pastry. They’re two dollars a pop, a bag for five, and it’s not the money. Sam knows it’s not the money.

He stops, feet planted. It takes a second for Dean to notice, to backtrack down the stained, gum-sticky sidewalk.

“What—”

Sam ducks into the store.

“Sam, c’mon, the meter’s running. We should get back.”

Sam ignores him. He orders a moon cake; two flat, triangular rice cakes; and two fried sesame balls, one filled with black bean paste for him and one filled with coconut for Dean. A tall, older woman fills up a white pastry box stamped with a red crest. The cash register dings. Sam hands over a ten, and she hands over the box with his change.

Dean stands off to the side, quiet for the first time all day and strangely sheepish.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dean says when they get outside.

Sam shrugs. “Didn’t do it ‘cause I had to.”

He cracks the seal on the box, popping the tape open with a thumbnail while they walk. He offers it to Dean, who takes the moon cake. He takes his sesame ball and bites into it. It’s fresh and crispy, almost wet with oil. It leaves a slick film on his lips, oil coating the inside of his mouth. It’s sweet and delicious, and he eats it in a few bites.

Dean cracks a smile when he looks over at Sam. “Dude, you’re a mess. Looks like you’re wearing lip gloss.”

He snags the napkin from Sam’s hand and swipes it across Sam’s lips, crowding him up against the side of an alley to get him to hold still. The box of pastries is nearly crushed between them, forgotten between the press of their bodies, Dean’s body so close to his own.

Dean rubs the napkin into Sam’s mouth for good measure, rough and a little painful. Up close like this, Dean has to tilt his head to look at him, has to reach up, and Sam would be lying if he said he didn’t like it. He catches Dean’s hand in his, plucking the crumpled wad of paper free. His other arm smooths over the small of Dean’s back, a firm press dragging him closer. Dean stutters forward, eyes dark and big as moons.

There’s only so far he can go. People look at them as they walk by, but not too closely. It’s the middle of the city, and no one cares. It’s starting to drizzle, the rain unable to touch them under the awning, but everyone else seems preoccupied with getting in and out of the spray. The sky is slowly turning black. The pastry box.

Dean makes a noise low in his throat, and Sam lets him go. The smell of petrichor is almost like that of sulfur, enough to make him hungry. He wonders if it’s the same for Dean, if his brain makes the same connections or different ones altogether. He wants to ask but doesn’t know how.

“The car,” Dean says.

Sam grunts in agreement, and they hightail it back down the hill. The rain beats down in heavy sheets, and he wishes wistfully for an umbrella. He thinks thrift store. He thinks hats.

The food in his belly feels heavy and cold, and somewhere, his blood is turning molten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need to say that it very nearly hurt me calling jin dui "sesame balls," but I don't actually think Sam would know what jin dui is. "Black bean paste" was nearly as painful.


	8. Chapter 8

They grow pale and thin in the outskirts of Utah. Frankly, Sam thinks it’s a wonder they lasted this long. He chalks it up to the fact that Dean’s been driving. Dean drives while Sam shivers and sweats in the backseat. He yells without really being aware of it. The only reason he knows is that when he comes to, in his moments of lucidity, his throat is aching and Dean wears a pinch-mouthed expression in the rearview mirror.

It’s a few days of this before Dean swears and stops the car abruptly.

They’re miles from civilization, on a thin stripe of backroads somewhere, and Dean wrenches open the car door and slams it with a bang.

Sam raises his head, a little muzzy, scenting for danger.

“Dean?”

The hallucinations are bad now. Bobby’s sitting in the passenger seat—no, Dad. No, Mom. It takes him a second to understand that Dean is no longer in the car. He fumbles the car door open, fingers catching and slipping on the latch. For a second, he thinks he’s locked in—childproofing, or- or—but no. His fingers are just thick and clumsy. His brain just isn’t up to the task.

Eventually, he gets it open and spills out onto the grass, more liquid than man. His head is pounding.

“Dean?”

Dean swears, comes to pick him up off the ground, and Sam half-heartedly waves him off, too content to be held, even if it’s just to be hip-checked up against the side of the car, pinned in place until Dean can yank the door open and push him back in more gently than the dark, stormy expression on his face would suggest.

“Dammit, Sammy, stay put. I gotta think.”

Sam closes his eyes to ease the spinning. It doesn’t help with the sick, but he feels less dizzy.

“Think about what?” He’s proud of that one, proud of the way he strung those words together, full sentence that makes sense and everything.

“Shut up,” Dean says. He makes sure Sam is tucked all the way into the car, no fingers or toes poking out, before closing the door firmly after him. He raps on the door once with his knuckles. Sam hears “Stay put” again, muffled through the closed window.

He leans his head against the glass, forehead smudging it, and tries to get some sleep.

*

He’s positive he won’t, but he must have, because by the time Dean comes back, the sky looks different. He gets in the car looking tired, hollows dark beneath his eyes. Sam wishes he could reach out and touch, but he can’t. He can barely keep his eyes open, his body content now that Dean is back within arm’s reach, within eyeshot.

“Gonna take care of you,” Dean says, soft.

Sam thinks he says it more to himself than anything else, but he answers anyway. “I know,” he murmurs.

He always knows. The engine starts up with a rumble beneath them.

*

At first he thinks he’s dreaming. Everything’s fixed in bizarre colors, blue and purple limned in white.

It’s nighttime.

Things come into focus in pieces, little by little into the light. Dean’s hands, knuckles scraped and bruised and hot against his mouth. The smudge of black up high on his cheek. The furrow between his eyebrows.

The tender way he cups the back of Sam’s head, drawing him up and feeding him like a child. Something lukewarm and salty brushes against his lips. There’s a plastic cup held up to his mouth. It smells like blood and sulfur, both.

Sam wraps his hand around it, around Dean’s hand because Dean won’t let it go—won’t let Sam go. He tilts his head back and drinks enthusiastically, lips and throat working at the cup.

“Easy. Easy, Sammy, I got you.”

He drinks it all and licks the inner rim, tongue stretching down to clean the inside walls of the cup, eking out every last drop.

He realizes with dismay that there’s none left for Dean, but he only realizes it after, embarrassed and ashamed of his own greed. Even still, it’s an effort to pull the cup away from his face. Even still he wants to lick the smooth plastic, chasing a taste that’s long gone but for the way he’s like a dog with a bone.

Health feels miraculous after so much sickness.

He pushes it away, and Dean lets him sit up. Sam is hard in his jeans, and he’s so, so aware of Dean’s closeness. Dean crouching over him in the backseat, Dean’s hold on his hair that’s turned into more of a caress but hasn’t let up.

“Did you get any?” Sam asks.

“I’m good,” Dean says, and Sam makes a dismayed sound in the back of his throat.

“That means no,” he says. He reaches up to take Dean’s face in his hands because turnabout is fair play.

Dean falls forward before catching himself, stumbling the few inches that mean his crotch is pressed against Sam’s knee for the barest second. That means Sam feels his brother’s erection hard against him.

Sam gasps.

Dean apologizes, like  _ sorry, I— _

Sam shakes his head, heading it off.  _ No, it’s fine. _

“I’ll take care of you too,” Sam thinks. He doesn’t know if he says it out loud.

* * *

They stay in a house by the beach.

The rain’s coming down, more mist than water. Everything turns fog-grey.

It isn’t the California Sam remembers, but maybe it’s better that way. The biting air is refreshing, taste of salt in the back of his throat whenever he breathes, and he’s starting to like the way the light refracts off the droplets in the air. He likes the peaceful, easy cast.

Lucifer still walks the earth, and Michael’s still gunning for Dean, but this? It’s good. For now, it’s good.


End file.
